Dialing on the App Tone at Web 2.0

Rich from Topix.net and Stewart from Ludicorp/Flickr are here to lead the discussion on "how the early Web OS is shaping up." Rich is summarizing his post on the Google OS.

Stewart is discussing how Flickr came to be and why they decided to use Web APIs for it. "App tones" like dial tones for the phone system. The APIs have been a bit help to Flickr so far.

Rich asked me about my Yahoo Web Services post and then noted that Topix.net gets a ton of users via My Yahoo... and they're making money from it.

How do APIs make money? eBay has a very good system in place for tracking API usage and how much money it makes. They can actually place a dollar value on individual developers. Wow. 40% of GMS (Gross Merchandise Sales) comes via the API. Holy crap!

Book recommendation: Platform Leadership.

Steve Gilmor asked how developers react to things like Sender-Id where some worry that the standards author may have other motives. Discussion didn't really go anywhere.

Flickr, GMail, del.icio.us are primarily about organizing your data. Flickr has a voting/reputation system for tagging (interesting!).

Lots of talk about why companies do APIs and small vs. big company innovation. Without standards, there's no way to stitch together various services (such as Yahoo and Flickr, since their photo system is better than Yahoo's).

Hey, there's a little Yahoo love-fest going on here. But it won't last long.

Lasting Web 2.0 companies should try to become a global platform for something or other? Does that imply always being big? It does mean APIs.

In some countries people don't use their own computers, they use cafes and such. How does that affect Web 2.0 companies?

Backing up photo archives "to the internet". Flickr, Gmail (!), and so on.

Syncing is important. Lots of devices. Data everywhere. Lots of it is moible.

There's nobody in the room from Google.

Someone just brought up IM technology. All platforms are closed except Jabber, which has no adoption. Skype uses the public network but keeps data private (encrypted). LiveJournal has security. Many services do not.

Who should provide centralized services like IM and so on when there's no clear business model? Government? Libraries? Bob Wyamn doesn't like libraries because of political interference.

The services that take off are those that operate around data we create ourselves. But syncronization becomes an issue again.

Uh oh, Steve Gilmor wants to beat up on me. I think I'll schedule the beatings for dinner time. :-)

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